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Bold action on clean energy?
Posted By katie allison granju
If he really means it, this would be a Very Good Thing.
With gas prices hitting $4 a gallon, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander said today he will call for a five-year effort similar to the Manhattan Project to put the country on the path to clean-energy independence
The senator said he would lay out the specifics of his proposal during a speech at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on May 9.
Changing our nation’s energy production and consumption patterns will take bold, aggressive leadership, and a monumental commitment of resources - similar to how we approached putting a man on the moon, and building the first atomic weapon.
But unlike our space race, or the Manhattan Project, any suggestion that we undertake truly bold action on clean energy development will be met with a lot of resistance from extremely powerful forces opposing real change. Nobody (as in Exxon et al) stood to lose money if we made it to the moon in five years.
I’ll be interested to see what Alexander says on May 9.
Apr 29th, 2008
I stopped listening to Alexander about 2 years ago, when he insisted that he would not keep a terrorist up past his bedtime, even to save NY from a nuclear attack.
There are PLENTY of ways to 1) increase domestic oil production (like drill for it) and 2) move toward non-oil energy sources (build fluid bed nuke plants) We won’t do any of them. The “Green” Luddites won’t be happy until we are freezing in the dark.
It’s more complicated than that.
Let’s assume you make a “clean energy” system for cars tomorrow. It’d take 10-15 years to put it on all the cars at least. We still have cars made in the 70’s rolling around the roads.
Then you have to deal with either the destruction or revamping of every gas station in the country. Either you’d have urban blight on every corner in America - no one is going to a convenience store if they didn’t need gas. And the resulting environmental cleanup costs would be enormous as well. Who is going to foot that bill?
It’s one thing to say, “hey, let’s have clean energy” quite another to put it into place.
This is completely omitting the NIMBY effect that goes into swing whenever something new comes out.
I’m a bit leary of government solutions to what is essentially a market problem. What are we going to get, more subsidized ethanol? Or some other system that lacks basic efficiency. Yes, we really need to push technologies (energy sources, delivery, and storage) but not with the government selecting winners and loosers.
Have you visited Honda’s Fuel Cell auto website recently? I’m ready for them to expand to my neck of the country so I can get a new car. The same place you get gasoline can also dispense hydrogen… over by the air and water. As the price of gas escalates those old internal combustible engines will start to disappear. Truckers may be another issue but not many of those pull up at my gas station.
Once a high efficiency of fuel cell power generation is established we can install home generators. Use and pay only for the electricity you use rather than corporate executive parachutes.
Come on, let’s plunge into the 21st century.
You guys should read Energy Victory by Robert Zubrin. His solution relies on a govt. mandate, but it’s a zero cost mandate. Simply pass a law requiring all new cars sold in this country be flex-fuel. Market forces will supply the E85 pumps once the huge demand from new cars is there. Once there is a real ethanol market there won’t be any need for subsidies. The
flex-fuel option only adds about $100 to the cost of a new car (quickly recouped from fuel savings at todays gas prices).
The Manhattan Project started with a newly discovered physical effect, self-sustaining nuclear reactions, and proceeded to find a way to weaponize that effect.
Talking about starting a “Manhattan Project” to produce new forms of energy is an idiotic analogy. When everyone sits down at the big table, just what are they supposed to do? “Think of something new, quick.”
The deep irony is that effective and safe designs for producing power from nuclear materials already exist. They are blocked from being built by fears about new technology and the exaggerations of environmental groups.
Every Government program requires “monumental” investment. Citizens are providing the resources and Government is collecting those resources and handing them out to favored groups. If the investment were not “monumental”, there would be no support for the program.
How about the simple, already existing turning coal into oil. Governer of Montana has said the cost will be about $50 a barrel. The tech has been proven and arround since the 80’s. But of course the Enviro Nuts are trying to stop it. The system WORKS. All we need to do is build the plants. But NOOOOOOO.. that is to simple for all the Enviro Nuts they would rather turn corn into fuel like that has ever made since.
What you need to do is let people like Jonathan Goodwin at saeenergy.com do his thing And give all the other entrepreneurs/engineers freedom and resourses to figure it out. It will happen.
Mike’s right. Fuel choice, as in Zubrin’s “Energy Victory” book, is a real-time real free-market solution. Everything else is fine, but we can’t afford to wait for it — let’s do this in the meantime. And biofuels are carbon neutral (yes, they are) so it’s a way around the economic shut-down that the “climate mitigation” guys think they have in store for us.
This sounds like an “earmark” to me - where to have the “Manhattan Project”? Gee doesn’t Sen Alexander’s home district look like a good place? This is pork, plain and simple and probably a bad idea just like Ethanol. Let private enterprise take the risks (and the rewards) and we will get a solution to the energy problems without the waste and inefficiency of BIG government.
Biofuel simply does not do the job. Hasn’t anyone noticed the food riots in the world, some of which are due to the very high price for corn caused by the corn ethanol demand? And this demand is a tiny percent of what would be needed to make any significant difference!
Corn ethanol is a total fiasco. From an energy or carbon neutral standpoint, it doesn’t cut it. It takes too much energy and other inputs to grow something where you only use a tiny percentage of the plant (the corn kernels).
Sugar cane is better, and if folks get cellulosic ethanol conversion working, that will be good too. But even so, we will have to convert large amounts of land to growing this stuff. For sugar cane, a relatively efficient source for biofuel, it is estimated that just the carbon cost of this requires 97 years to pay back!
It ain’t just about the ideas, folks. You gotta look at the numbers too.
If we are truly at peak oil, the only thing that will prevent major economic pain is rapid construction of coal and nuclear plants, and coal->liquid fuel conversion.
Of course, if you are an anthropogenic global warming alarmist, you will instead choose decades of economic hardship (and a dramatic increase in third world deaths and wars) in order to possibly mitigate a threat which would take decades to materialize.
What makes you think Exxon et al would lose money? I’d think they’d bust their butts to take advantage of the technologies. “Sorry Mr. Chavez, we can make the stuff for less and then we don’t have to put up with your BS”.
In the meantime I suggest we use more renewable energy. Stake the NIMBYs, watermelons and other crazies out in the sun and wind until they dry out, then burn them for fuel.
I’m a brilliant engineer with a viable concept for a light, efficient,
external combustion engine that will burn any fuel at 90% thermodynamic efficiency. The project looked really good to me till I read this. Frackit, I can’t compete with resources like this.
We don’t need a frip frackin’ Manhattan project; most of the answers to our problems are laying around in plain sight.
If anything we need a someone with the will of Truman who used the results of the Manhattan Project to convince a bunch of fools that their resistance was standing in the way of ending the hard times.
Fer Gawd’s sake, the Chinese are preparing to drill for oil 50 miles of the Florida coast while the ecodorks tell us northerners to suck it up and wear a few extra sweaters in the winter.
We will never solve this energy problem without congress becoming serious and acting for our whole nations well being. This applies to both parties, especially the Dimmocrats eternal witch hunts.
The thought of what our Congress will do with a project *this* big is awe-inspiring. Which is not the same thing as reassuring.
Quick follow-up on Bob Zubrin. He does say methanol is a far better solution than ethanol, because it can be made simply from any type of biomass (as well as coal or natural gas). This should get around the food crop concerns. As far as the mention of “peak oil”, check out the 18 Apr acticle by Arthur St. Antoine about the huge new field discovered by Petrobras of the coast of Brazil. This is the 3rd major find there since last Nov. Brazil could become another Saudi Arabia in terms of reserves. The acticle also mentions Thomas Gold and his “Deep Hot Biosphere” theory that postulates an abiogenic origin of oil (the earth is still producing oil).
The Governor of Montana also promised that all new energy plants in Montana would be clean and green. The coal to liquid fuels plant is not clean and not green — no carbon capture, and worse environmentally than regular old refined gasoline.
Lamar Alexander is correct. We need a “Manhatten Project” to develop cheap, renewable fuel that does not pollute or have any other harmfull effects.
Does anyone have the formula for “Magic Pixie Dust?”
After reading the specs for what the ‘greens’ will find acceptable, that appears to be the only viable solution.
Willis said:
“The same place you get gasoline can also dispense hydrogen… over by the air and water. As the price of gas escalates those old internal combustible engines will start to disappear. Truckers may be another issue but not many of those pull up at my gas station.
Once a high efficiency of fuel cell power generation is established we can install home generators.”
Hydrogen is another form of “pixie dust.” Nasty to handle, and there are no hydrogen wells. From what do the hydrogen fans intend to produce hydrogen?
Electrolysis of water is often mentioned, but what is to provide the energy to run that process? Most hydrogen today is produced from natural gas, and is not cost effective. Hydrogen enthusiasts need to understand that while it burns cleanly, they have only moved the pollution out of sight.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.